Various Artists The Rudy Van Gelder Editions-The Complete Collection Genre:Jazz The legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder is as integral a part of Jazz history as any of the musicians who created the music. As the "go-to" engineer for Blue Note, Prestige, and Impulse in the 1950s and '60s, Van ... more »Gelder made clean, crisp, and meticulously well-balanced recordings from his home studio in Hackensack and later in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, contributing to classic after classic. Blue Note introduced the highly-successful Rudy Van Gelder (RVG) Series in 1999, giving Van Gelder the opportunity to lend his precise hand and ears to the process of re-mastering in 24-bit many of the great Blue Note sessions that he himself had originally engineered. The RVG Editions contain bonus tracks as well as rare session photographs and expert liner notes. Blue Note has put all of the CDs in this series together in one set exclusively for Amazon.com. Included are the best Blue Note sessions by legendary jazz masters--Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and many more. This collection contains the most-important sessions ever recorded for Alfred Lion's Blue Note imprint and, arguably, the finest jazz ever recorded. Now it?s all available with one-click. Complete Catalog of the Rudy Van Gelder Editions
Click here for a complete list of recordings included in the Rudy Van Gelder Collection Jazz Classics for Every Collection from the RVG Series
The legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder is as integral a part of Jazz history as any of the musicians who created the music. As the "go-to" engineer for Blue Note, Prestige, and Impulse in the 1950s and '60s, Van Gelder made clean, crisp, and meticulously well-balanced recordings from his home studio in Hackensack and later in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, contributing to classic after classic. Blue Note introduced the highly-successful Rudy Van Gelder (RVG) Series in 1999, giving Van Gelder the opportunity to lend his precise hand and ears to the process of re-mastering in 24-bit many of the great Blue Note sessions that he himself had originally engineered. The RVG Editions contain bonus tracks as well as rare session photographs and expert liner notes. Blue Note has put all of the CDs in this series together in one set exclusively for Amazon.com. Included are the best Blue Note sessions by legendary jazz masters--Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and many more. This collection contains the most-important sessions ever recorded for Alfred Lion's Blue Note imprint and, arguably, the finest jazz ever recorded. Now it?s all available with one-click. Complete Catalog of the Rudy Van Gelder Editions
Click here for a complete list of recordings included in the Rudy Van Gelder Collection Jazz Classics for Every Collection from the RVG Series
Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis
Blue Train, John Coltrane
Mosaic, Art Blakey Featured Artist: Sonny Clark
Sonny Clark Trio
Dial S for Sonny
Cool Struttin' Featured Artist: Dexter Gordon
One Flight Up
Getting' Around
Our Man In Paris Featured Artist: Jackie McLean
A Fickle Sonance
Capuchin Swing
Let Freedom Ring Featured Artist: Jimmy Smith
Sermon
House Party
Cool Blues
CD Reviews
The Emperor Has No Clothes
D. Allen | McKinney Texas | 02/12/2007
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I don't want to hurt anyones feelings or make anyone mad, but...I am constantly amazed by the hype surrounding Rudy Van Gelder's recordings. Yes, he recorded a large number of historic and truly great performances, but unfortunately the technique he employed was severely flawed, resulting in flat two dimensional recordings that give no hint of depth - even on stereo recordings (how did he do that?). To make matters even worse, many of the titles in this series are remastered poorly, resulting in harshness and glare. I have bought, and still buy, many of the titles in this series because I must have some of these treasured performances, regardless of sound quality, but much better jazz recordings from this period can be found on the Riverside, Verve, and Columbia labels (in that order). Riverside's recordings are especially impressive for their three dimensional soundstages and natural sound.
UPDATE 6-30-09: I've discovered the remastering problems to be most severe on the '98 remasters, and in my mind they are unacceptable. Fortunately, most - if not all of these - are available in earlier remasters, and they sound significantly better. Most possess some degree of air and ambiance, giving the listener some sense of depth and space sans the glare. You'll have to deal with the Amazon Marketplace though since they've been out of print for some time, but it's definitely worth it. I've picked up most of these for less than $10 each in Like New condition."
Only if you believe in index funds; stock pickers look elsew
Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 08/31/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"When Alfred Lion and Francis Wolf, a pair of German-Jewish immigrants, founded a small record company in the late 30's, primarily to record their favorite musician, Sidney Bechet, little did they, let alone the public, suspect that they would eventually be associated with the best recordings by the best musicians--East Coast black players--and with the hippest of all jazz labels. The elevation of their optometrist-hobbyist, with his simple approach to miking and mixing, to guru status among all recording engineers was another serendipitous event, culminating in many teenagers scouting out Van Gelder-engineered sessions as late as the '90's for use in their sampling.
Lion and Wolf almost closed shop in the '50's, but the sudden emergence and signing of Jimmy Smith was enough to keep them going until the company tanked in the late '60's, after which the label was purchased and revived by giant EMI (Capitol).
Much of the Van Gelder mystique is exactly that--mystique. There's no problem in blindfold tests identifying a Van Gelder date--all of the instruments are nearly equally balanced, the piano has a "bottled up" sound that tends to homogenize all pianists' individual touches, the bass and ride cymbal are boosted far more than on other labels, reverberation is used to make soloists--vocals, trumpet, saxophones--sound bigger than life. Sonic "imaging" of the instruments' physical set-up along with room dynamics and 3-dimensional depth are sacrificed to a flat aural canvas that makes everything sound bright, clear, and "enhanced."
At times Van Gelder's formula works wonders (the Art Blakey dates with Brownie at Birdland); at times it literarily squeezes all of the personality out of normally distinctive tonal voices like Bill Evans or Anton Carlos Jobim. Moreover, many Blue Note sessions are caught up in the same, formulaic programming devices--an endeavor to make a pop "soul" hit followed by more serious jazz (Morgan's "Sidewinder" and its countless clones).
[For the doubters, I provide some direct, specific comparisons at the end of Comments (below).]"
Please make it STOP!!
Dazedcat | Earth | 08/16/2007
(1 out of 5 stars)
"I'm as guilty as any other jazz lover when it comes to box sets or "complete" collections and the like. However, this is so over the top and completely ridiculous it defies belief. Does any human being really need to spend close to two thousand dollars at ONCE to buy something like this? NO! What are you actually purchasing here, an audio engineers' collected works or jazz music? If it's jazz music, then how in God's name can you purchase so much of it at once and do the music any justice at all? How can you purchase such a massive amount of music and remotely give it the respect that it deserves?
What exactly are you supposed to do here, listen to Rudy's studio technique from album to album and take notes about frequency roll off by year?? Or are you supposed to extract these various sessions to wav file and compare compression ratios? Did a 1962 session exhibit better RIAA recommended frequency characteristics than a 1960 session did? Does the jazz contained within here matter at all?????????
Make it just STOP! If you want music to listen to, purchase these titles individually and live with them for a while before moving onto the next one. Art Blakey would rise from the dead and kick your *** if he knew such nonsense was happening in the modern world. Blakey's music deserves to be heard..........not analyzed......and so does every other musician that is a part of this "box" set.
Good grief."
A Newb--loving discoveries made & ones that await
S. McCrea | Henderson, NV United States | 09/30/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Having only recently begun to dig into the treasures of Jazz, I can't really offer and* opinion the way I can about Led Zeppelin or Rush or many other artists. (Speaking of the former, Jimmy Page is generally considered the greatest "miking" engineer ever. Listen to the drums on "Kashmir": he put Bonzo in an enormous room of the chateau where the sessions where recorded and, with only the drum kit and mikes, let Bonham create the most unique drum line ever recorded).
I recently read (in paraphrase), "Trying to get teenagers and jazz to mix just ain't gonna happen." And, indeed, as a teen (I'll be 38 this month), I'll admit I couldn't stand jazz. Part of it was definitely the extremely poor recordings, which, I mistakenly thought, had been the result of poor engineering and slip-shod production. Digital remastering has shown me the problem was definitely NOT the engineering. The remastered, SACD version of "Bag's Groove", to name just one, is mind boggling. One feels as it one is sitting inside the instruments as they are being played. Just amazing.
I wish I'd been more open minded as a kid. There was an entire world of jazz out there to explore that I had closed my mind to. Maturity doth have it's advantages.
While some lps were recorded in a very shoddy manner and are difficult to listen to, many of these albums are turning out to be absolute gems: much like BMG's re-release of RCA Victor's first commercially produced stereo recordings (of art music). Though the tapes are as much as a half century old, and analogue to boot, the CD allows one to dispense with the horror that was vinyl and actually HEAR the genius and not the towering imperfections of the format; the needle which, regardless of the price and, alleged, quality of the player, would bounce, crackle, snap and pop thru out--slaughtering the track in the process. With the perfection of digital recording we can "say good-bye to all that" (as the late Robert Graves said in a vastly different context).
The desperation of The World's Three Record Companies to shore up their consistently faltering profit margins has led them to try ANYthing to enhance profitability. One of the side benefits is the massive--and it is truly is massive--onslaught of jazz and art music recordings reseurrected from the "vault", remastered, with the best hopefully given the SACD treatment, that has appeared in the last decade.
The demand is definitely there for high quality re-releases of jazz. I had to settle for a CDDA of Soultrane because the SACD is out-of-print and the CHEAPEST used copy is $150(!!).
*Pls note that I have dyslexia and can't always SEE my errors to correct them and my wife doesn't always have time to play amanuensis."
